Pharrell and Hans Zimmer to Consult on Academy Awards

Hans Zimmer and Pharrell Williams

David Livingston/Getty Images and Steve Granitz/WireImage

Neptunes and N.E.R.D. producer Pharrell Williams has been hired to provide musical supervision for the 84th Academy Awards on February 26th alongside Inception composer Hans Zimmer. Williams and Zimmer will serve as musical consultants for the ceremony, a role that has not existed in previous versions of the awards show.

Photos: Random Notes

The Academy Awards have rarely included musical performances aside from nominated songs, comedy skits and a performance in memoriam of recently deceased stars. It's unclear exactly what Williams and Zimmer will be doing for the broadcast, but if the two collaborate and play to their musical strengths, the Oscars ceremony may sound something like a very ominous strip club this year.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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